Kurt Schuschnigg | |
|---|---|
 Schuschnigg in 1936 | |
| Chancellor of Austria | |
| In office 29 July 1934 – 11 March 1938 | |
| President | Wilhelm Miklas |
| Vice-Chancellor | Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg Eduard Baar-Baarenfels Ludwig Hülgerth Edmund Glaise-Horstenau |
| Preceded by | Engelbert Dollfuss |
| Succeeded by | Arthur Seyss-Inquart |
| Minister of Defence | |
| In office 29 July 1934 – 11 March 1938 | |
| Preceded by | Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg |
| Succeeded by | Arthur Seyss-Inquart |
| Minister of Education | |
| In office 24 May 1933 – 14 May 1936 | |
| Preceded by | Anton Rintelen |
| Succeeded by | Hans Pernter |
| Minister of Justice | |
| In office 29 January 1932 – 10 July 1934 | |
| Preceded by | Hans Schürff |
| Succeeded by | Egon Berger-Waldenegg |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Kurt Alois Josef Johann Edler von Schuschnigg (1897-12-14)14 December 1897 |
| Died | 18 November 1977(1977-11-18) (aged 79) |
| Political party | Fatherland Front (1933–1938) |
| Other political affiliations | Christian Social Party (1927–1933) |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 2 |
| Alma mater | University of Freiburg Innsbruck University |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance |  Austro-Hungarian Empire |
| Branch/service |  Austro-Hungarian Army |
| Years of service | 1915–1919 |
| Battles/wars | World War I |
Order of Schuschnigg to the Austrian army during theGerman invasion Recorded 11 March 1938 | |
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Kurt Alois Josef Johann von Schuschnigg[a] (German:[ˈkʊʁtˈʃʊʃnɪk]; 14 December 1897 – 18 November 1977) was an Austrian politician who was theChancellor of theFederal State of Austria from the 1934 assassination of his predecessorEngelbert Dollfuss until the 1938Anschluss withNazi Germany. Although Schuschnigg considered Austria a "German state" and Austrians to be Germans, he was strongly opposed toAdolf Hitler's goal to absorb Austria into theThird Reich and wished for it to remain independent.[1]
When Schuschnigg's efforts to keep Austria independent had failed, he resigned his office. After the Anschluss he was arrested, kept in solitary confinement, and eventually interned in various concentration camps. He was liberated in 1945 by the advancingUnited States Army and spent most of the rest of his life inacademia in theUnited States.[2] Schuschnigg gained American citizenship in 1956.
Schuschnigg was born in Reiff am Gartsee (nowRiva del Garda) in theTyrolean crown land ofAustria-Hungary (now inTrentino,Italy), the son of Anna Josefa Amalia (Wopfner)[3] and Austrian General Artur von Schuschnigg, member of a long-established Austrian officers' family ofCarinthian Slovene descent. TheSlovene spelling of the family name isŠušnik.
He received his education at theStella Matutina Jesuit College inFeldkirch, Vorarlberg. DuringWorld War I, he was taken prisoner at theItalian Front and held captive until September 1919. Subsequently, he studied law at theUniversity of Freiburg and theUniversity of Innsbruck, where he became a member of theCatholic fraternityA.V. Austria. After graduating in 1922, he practiced as a lawyer inInnsbruck.[2]
Schuschnigg first joined the right-wingChristian Social Party and in 1927 was elected to theNationalrat, then the youngest parliamentary deputy. Suspicious of the paramilitaryHeimwehr organisation, he established the CatholicOstmärkische Sturmscharen forces in 1930.
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On 29 January 1932, the Christian Social chancellorKarl Buresch appointed SchuschniggMinister of Justice, an office he retained in the cabinet of Buresch's successorEngelbert Dollfuss, and he also served asMinister of Education from 24 May 1933. As justice minister, he openly discussed the abolition of theparliamentary system and restored thedeath penalty. In March 1933, he and Chancellor Dollfuss took the occasion to dissolve the National Council parliament. After the socialistFebruary Uprising of 1934, he had eight insurgents immediately executed, earning him the reputation of an "assassin of the workers". The executions have since been referred to as a vengeful act of judicial murder.[4] Schuschnigg himself later called his orders a "faux pas".[5]
On 1 May 1934, Dollfuss had erected the authoritarianFederal State of Austria. After Dollfuss was assassinated by the NaziOtto Planetta during theJuly Putsch, Schuschnigg on 29 July was appointed Austrian chancellor. Like Dollfuss, Schuschnigg ruled mostly by decree. Although his rule was milder than that of Dollfuss, his policies were not much different from the policies of his predecessor. He had to manage the economy of a near-bankrupt state and to maintain law and order in a country which was forbidden, by the terms of the 1919Treaty of Saint-Germain, to maintain an army in excess of 30,000 men. At the same time, he had to also cope with armed paramilitary forces in Austria, which owed their allegiance not to the state but to various rival political parties. He also had to be mindful of the growing strength of theAustrian Nazis, who supportedAdolf Hitler's ambitions to absorb Austria intoNazi Germany. His overriding political concern was to preserve Austria's independence within the borders imposed on it by the terms of the Treaty of Saint-Germain, which ultimately failed.
John Gunther wrote in 1936 of Schuschnigg: "It would not be too much to say that he is as much a prisoner of the Italians now [as he was during World War I]—if the Germans don't get him next week."[6] His policy of counterbalancing the German threat by aligning himself with Austria's southern and eastern neighbours—theKingdom of Italy under thefascist rule ofBenito Mussolini and theKingdom of Hungary—was doomed to failure after Mussolini had sought Hitler's support in theSecond Italo-Ethiopian War and left Austria under the increasing pressure of a massivelyrearmed Third Reich. Schuschnigg adopted a policy ofappeasement towards Hitler and called Austria the "better German state", but struggled to keep Austria independent. In July 1936, he signed an Austro-German Agreement, which, among other concessions, allowed the release of imprisoned July Putsch insurgents and the inclusion of the Nazi contact menEdmund Glaise-Horstenau andGuido Schmidt in theAustrian cabinet.[7] The Nazi Party remained banned; however, the Austrian Nazis gained ground and relations between the two countries deteriorated further. In reaction to Hitler's threats to exercise a controlling influence over Austrian politics, Schuschnigg publicly declared in January 1938:
There is no question of ever accepting Nazi representatives in the Austrian cabinet. An absolute abyss separates Austria from Nazism ... We reject uniformity and centralization. ... Catholicism is anchored in our very soil, and we know but one God: and that is not the State, or the Nation, or that elusive thing, Race.[8]
Rumours concerning his involvement in theVon Trapp family’s rise to fame have also come to light. It’s rumoured that upon hearing the Von Trapp family sing over the radio, he invited them to perform in Vienna which greatly helped them in their rise to fame.[9][10][11]
On 12 February 1938, Schuschnigg met with Hitler in hisBerghof residence in an attempt to smooth the worsening relations between their two countries. To Schuschnigg's surprise, Hitler presented him with a set of demands which, in manner and in terms, amounted to an ultimatum, effectively demanding the handing over of power to the Austrian Nazis. The terms of the agreement, presented to Schuschnigg for immediate endorsement, stipulated the appointment of Nazi sympathiserArthur Seyss-Inquart as minister of security, which controlled the police. Another pro-Nazi, Dr.Hans Fischböck, was to be named as minister of finance to prepare for economic union between Germany and Austria. A hundred officers were to be exchanged between the Austrian and the German armies. All imprisoned Nazis were to be amnestied and reinstated. In return, Hitler would publicly reaffirm the treaty of 11 July 1936 and Austria's national sovereignty. "The Fuhrer was abusive and threatening, and Schuschnigg was presented with far-reaching demands ..."[12][13] According to Schuschnigg's memoirs, he was coerced into signing the "agreement" before leaving Berchtesgaden.[14]
The president,Wilhelm Miklas, was reluctant to endorse the agreement but eventually did so. Then he, Schuschnigg and a few key Cabinet members considered a number of options:
In the event, they decided to go with the third option.[15]
On the following day, 14 February, Schuschnigg reorganised his cabinet on a broader basis and included representatives of all former and present political parties. Hitler immediately appointed a newGauleiter for Austria, a Nazi Austrian army officer who had just been released from prison in accordance with the terms of the general amnesty stipulated by the Berchtesgaden agreement.[16]
On 20 February, Hitler made a speech before theReichstag which was broadcast live and which for the first time was relayed also by theAustrian radio network. A key phrase in the speech was: "The German Reich is no longer willing to tolerate the suppression of ten million Germans across its borders."
In Austria, the speech was met with concern and by demonstrations by both pro and anti-Nazi elements. On the evening of 24 February, theAustrian Federal Diet (the Austrian Bundestag),[17] was called into session. In his speech to the Diet, Schuschnigg referred to the July 1936 agreement with Germany and stated: "Austria will go thus far and no further." He ended his speech with an emotional appeal to Austrian patriotism: "Red-White-Red (the colours of theAustrian flag) until we're dead!"[18] The speech was received with disapproval from the Austrian Nazis and they began mobilising their supporters. The headline inThe Times of London was "Schuschnigg's Speech – Nazis Disturbed". The phrase "thus far and no further" was found "disturbing" by the German press.[19]
To resolve the political uncertainty in the country and to convince Hitler and the rest of the world that the people of Austria wished to remain Austrian and independent of the Third Reich, Schuschnigg, with the full agreement of the President and other political leaders, decided to proclaim a plebiscite to be held on 13 March. But the wording of the referendum which had to be responded to with a "Yes" or a "No" turned out to be controversial. It read: "Are you for a free, German, independent and social, Christian and united Austria, for peace and work, for the equality of all those who affirm themselves for the people and Fatherland?"[20]
There was another issue which drew the ire of the National Socialists. Although members of Schuschnigg's party (the Fatherland Front) could vote at any age, all other Austrians below the age of 24 were to be excluded under a clause to that effect in the Austrian Constitution. This would shut out from the polls most of the Nazi sympathisers in Austria, since the movement was strongest among the young.[20]
Knowing he was in a bind, Schuschnigg held talks with the leaders of theSocial Democrats, and agreed to legalise their party and their trade unions in return for their support of the referendum.[18]
The German reaction to the announcement was swift. Hitler first insisted the plebiscite be cancelled. When Schuschnigg reluctantly agreed to scrap it, Hitler demanded his resignation, and insisted that Seyss-Inquart be appointed his successor. This demand President Miklas was reluctant to endorse but eventually, under the threat of immediate armed intervention, it was endorsed as well. Schuschnigg resigned on 11 March, and Seyss-Inquart was appointed Chancellor, but it made no difference; German troops flooded into Austria and were received everywhere by enthusiastic and jubilant crowds.[21] On the morning after the invasion, the LondonDaily Mail's correspondent asked the new Chancellor, Seyss-Inquart, how these stirring events came about, he received the following reply: "The Plebiscite that had been fixed for tomorrow was a breach of the agreement which Dr. Schuschnigg made with Hitler at Berchtesgaden, by which he promised political liberty for National Socialists in Austria."[22] On 12 March 1938, Schuschnigg was placed under house arrest.[b]
After initial house arrest followed by solitary confinement atGestapo headquarters, he spent the whole ofWorld War II inSachsenhausen, thenDachau. In late April 1945, Schuschnigg narrowly escaped an execution order by Adolf Hitler, along with other prominent concentration camp inmates, by beingtransferred from Dachau to South Tyrol whereSS-Totenkopfverbände guards abandoned the prisoners into the hands of someWehrmacht officers, who then freed them.[23] They were then turned over toAmerican troops on 4 May 1945. From there, Schuschnigg and his family were transported, along with many of the ex-prisoners, to theisle of Capri in Italy before being set free.
AfterWorld War II, Kurt Schuschnigg was forbidden from joining theAustrian People's Party (ÖVP) because the party wanted to distance itself from theAustrian dictatorship. Moreover, the ÖVP did not expect theirsocial democratic coalition partner to tolerate Schuschnigg's presence in the party, since after thecivil war of 1934 he had had many social democrats killed as Minister of Justice. Schuschnigg emigrated to theUnited States, where he was sheltered at the chateau estate Vouziers of theDesloge family inSt. Louis, Missouri;[24] and then he became aprofessor ofpolitical science atSaint Louis University from 1948 to 1967. He became an American citizen in 1956.[25]
His first wife Herma died in a car accident in 1935. He remarried in 1938, but lost his second wife, Vera Fugger von Babenhausen (née Countess Czernin), in 1959.
Kurt Schuschnigg went back toAustria where he downplayed his time exercising dictatorial powers as chancellor and tried to justify the regime.
Schuschnigg died atMutters, nearInnsbruck, in 1977.
In German
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Federal Chancellor of Austria 1934–1938 | Succeeded by |
